Monday, January 5, 2009

Hull City: The Dream Makers

Happy Fun Music Time!I love these three songs.

And Here We Go AgainAnd Advantage Played is back! I had a chance to do some brainstorming and research over break and I’ve come up with some great ideas. I’ve got great articles to read and wonderful music to listen to.

Hull City – The Dreams Begin

To be a Hull City fan now is to feel glory. Gloom and disappointment have been forgotten.

In 1999 Hull City fans were partying, but it was a party that celebrated a season that did just enough not to fail. The fans drank and loved knowing that they would not being going down to the Football Conference(below the first four tiers of English football). They had just completed a season that is known as their “Great Escape.”

When your luck is bad. When the managers are shit. When your only glory is not failing miserably. Then every positive is a reason to celebrate. Little did Hull City fans know that their frenzied celebration was the start of a remarkable turn around that would bring them to the top division of English Football.And What a Good Dream It Was

Over the next nine years Hull City made an amazing turn around that most lower division English football fans dream of while stumbling home drunk. With an new commercial director, Adam Pearson that gave them financial stability, a new stadium in 2002, and quality acquisitions by two head coaches Peter Taylor and then Philip Brown, Hull City fulfilled their fans every dreams.

The fans emotions and hopes went from darkest black to the pure light. They were the lucky few, the fans whose dreams came true. The old men with weathered wrinkled faces who had watched every game for fifty years were going to see Hull in the Premier League. They were not going to die perpetual losers.

The joys and despair Hull City fans felt are the purest emotions in English football: Patience. Anger. Love. Joy. Hatred. Fulfillment. Self-Prophecy. Love of Money.

Hull City has packaged these emotions together and sold them to their fans over the last ten years and they are a brilliant success. Where do they go from here?

From Dreams to Nightmares?

In the Premiere League, movement is immeasurably slow. The Big Four sit like sandstone giants at the top and look down at the foolish challengers below. They will fall in the end. Nothing stands forever, but it will take time. The years will wear away on the big four like wind, sand, and water carve canyons of immeasurable size.

For Hull City, this means progress has slowed to a pace that cannot match the last ten years. UEFA Cup spots, Champions League, winning the Title, all these are goals and mark progress but progress that will take years and years to complete. Can the fans stand the slow emotions and bitterly slow progress that comes with the Premier League? Will the emotions and glories of the Premier League ever match the glory of the last ten years?